Advice on falling in love with an assault survivor The first time you look at them They will do one of two things. They will either not look you in the eye Out of fear that your passion will burn them After all, The last time another's eye stared through their paper skin They caught on fire. Or this person may stare straight back into your pupil As though they are staring death straight in the face There is no in between with a survivor They will either move too fast or not at all But their trust is the petal of a daisy in the desert Withered and delicate as you touch them for the first time You cannot expect warmth from something so broken For survivors train themselves to ignore the ghost in their heads But that demon will always show up And when they finally let you undress them You undress their monster as well As you remove articles of clothing Their body begins to freeze over And the spirit they could once hide and stow away Is now at the forefront of everything. They train themselves to have *** with the lights off Because should a fleck of brightness reveal an eye A nose A mouth The face of their abuser will fill in the rest They do not want you to see their body For the scars leave train tracks of the places they've been Crawling in fields of thorns Wrapping themselves in knives Swallowing perceived sanity in the form of a pill They will not always be okay Because in their mind they are constantly at war With an enemy ship that retreated long ago. To everyone around them, they are a martyr They have won the battle But in their mind They are a fallen soldier Who can't stop hearing their own gunshots fire Into the chest of their opponent. Falling in love with an assault survivor Is agreeing to watch parts of them Go up in flames Over and over again And picking up the ashes they leave behind.